How can you tell a zombie has soul? He listens to vinyl records instead of an iPod.

FILM REVIEW

‘Warm Bodies’

2 ½ stars (out of 4)

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for zombie violence and some language

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer, Rob Corddry, John Malkovich

Director: Jonathan Levine

Run time: 97 minutes

That’s one of the clues that “Warm Bodies” presents to Julie (Teresa Palmer) that the shuffling (his feet, not his MP3s) undead boy who kidnapped her might not be as gruesome as he seems. Sure, he ate her boyfriend’s brains, but he also feels an odd compulsion to be nice. He drops the needle on Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Patience,” stares at her with a gaze that’s half empty-eyed cannibal and half full of confused inner longing.

This is where zombie purists should look away. “Warm Bodies” upends the consensual “rules” of zombie films – thou shalt not divert from the “Night of the Living Dead” holy standard! – in an attempt to tell a story about more than mastication and survival. Here, zombies can run fast, and absorb the memories of their victims when they eat their grey matter. They’re also divided into “corpses,” which resemble normal zombies, and “bonies,” which are corpses evolved to a meanier, nastier state. The most egregious derivation from the George Romero mythology, however, is how the corpses have – ulp – friendships.

The narrative takes the perspective of the zombie boy, eventually dubbed “R” (Nicholas Hoult), who speaks nice, clean English in a voiceover, but grunts and groans monosyllabic dialogue. The suggestion is, somewhere within him is his lost humanity. He and his best zombie bud (Rob Corddry) hang out at an abandoned, post-apocalyptic airport bar, and have long non-conversations with each other. Occasionally, one of them moans.

R collects cool stuff like Joni Mitchell and Springsteen records, and has made an airplane his de-facto apartment. Once he snatches Julie and shows his more sensitive side, she learns to trust him. He saves her from a roaming pack of corpses; they find a BMW with a full tank and take joyrides. When she gets wet in the rain and takes off her shirt, he fidgets like a nervous schoolboy.

Her father (John Malkovich) leads the group of survivors in a nearby city. He’s a militant type who puts bullets in zombie heads on sight. Who can blame him? But the subtleties of zombiedom in this reality aren’t readily apparent to him. Is… is love the cure to what ails the afflicted?

“Warm Bodies” offers a reasonably diverting blend of horror, comedy and romance. It succeeds at getting us to empathize with R, essentially a shambling cadaver with Justin Bieber hair, by letting us inside his head. It isn’t as successful in creating a sense of doomed-world poignancy; we’re supposed to feel bittersweet stirrings of sadness and hope every time the soundtrack swells with minor-key indie rock. The story also unfolds predictably, with a hectic, action-packed climax, and shoehorns in what it thinks is a clever nod to “Romeo and Juliet.” But at least it tries to do something conceptually different. One more movie about humans fighting to survive in a world populated with the walking dead might be one movie too many.